Oceans

His rough-cut hair and beard shine silver like sunlight off water. His eyes are dappled with hues of the reef. He wears a dive-suit sewn in shades of ocean blue. His name seems derived from the sea, too: Cousteau. When he splashes off the stern of a dive boat, Jean-Michel Cousteau folds at the waist. His arms draw to his side. His swim fins flex and bite into the water. He is fluid, streamlined, serene. A cascade of chrome bubbles rise from the scuba regulator in his mouth.

Scientists seeking to transmit loud sounds through the Pacific Ocean to measure global warming defended their experiment Wednesday, insisting that the noise would not deafen whales and pledging to halt the project if it appeared to be causing harm. "We are not out to harm a single whale with these underwater sounds," said David Hyde, director of the research project at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego. "We will cease sound transmissions to avoid harm to marine mammals."

For more than three hours last week, delegates to the world body responsible for the global ban on killing whales for profit discussed more efficient and painless ways to do just that. Norway recommended its new harpoon-borne, high-explosive grenade fired deep into the whale's brain, noting in a scientific report that 63% of the 625 whales it killed that way last year died instantly. Japan said a .

President Clinton will unveil a plan today intended to permanently protect coral reefs in the northwest Hawaiian Islands and set a course that would ban fishing, offshore drilling and other activities from sensitive ocean waters, a White House official said Thursday. Clinton will order the Commerce and Interior departments to designate "marine protected areas," marked by diverse marine ecosystems.

December 4, 1989 | IVAN AMATO, Ivan Amato is chemistry/materials science editor of Science News Magazine, from which this article is adapted. and

"It's tougher than weather, clear as crystal, flexible as paper and can even transform baby breaths or speeding stardust into tiny electrical signals that you can keep an eye on." That's what engineer Victor Chatigny of Penwalt Corp. in Valley Forge, Pa., might say if he made a television ad for a seemingly does-it-all plastic that his company sells as Kynar Piezo Film.

Rising seas caused by warmth trapped in polluted air could inundate $48 billion worth of property along San Francisco Bay over the next century unless preventive action is taken, a Berkeley research organization estimates in a report released today. The impact of global warming, the so-called greenhouse effect, projected by the nonprofit Pacific Institute, is a worst-case scenario based on a one-meter rise in sea level from melting land ice and expansion of the oceans themselves as they warm.

Vegetable farmers John Lewallen and his wife, Eleanor, harvest their crops in the intertidal waters of the Pacific Ocean at a picturesque, remote cove studded with rock outcroppings. Their briny farm yields wild sea vegetables--seaweed--handpicked in hard-to-reach coves and bays along a 40-mile stretch of rugged Northern California coast.

California's leaders should ban smoking on beaches, forbid fast-food joints from distributing polystyrene cups and containers and require markets to recycle plastic bags or ban them outright as part of an aggressive campaign to reduce plastic marine debris. These and dozens of other recommendations are included in a report to be released next week by Gov.

Until recently, map makers could chart the alien landscapes of Venus and Mars in greater detail than the sea floor that covers 70% of the Earth's surface. People have been drawing increasingly accurate maps of onshore geography for about 5,000 years--the age of what many scholars consider humanity's earliest known map. However, the effort to produce even rudimentary surveys of the mountains, rifts and ocean plains hidden miles beneath the waves began in earnest only a few decades ago.

In a coastal lava desert at the western tip of the island of Hawaii, a hodgepodge of unusual plants is thriving. Artichokes, Brussels sprouts, even delicate roses bloom in the broiling sun, alongside the passion fruit and orchids that belong in Hawaiian backyards. The secret to getting temperate plants to flourish in these harsh conditions lies 2,000 feet below the sun-flecked surf just yards away.